Craig Sisterson pays tribute to a legend.
On December 12, one of the world’s greatest spy masters slipped from this world. Not from an assassin’s bullet in a darkened alley, poisoning from a nerve agent, or a wretched betrayal by someone wrongly trusted; but pneumonia. After a lifetime entwined with spycraft, David John Moore Cornwell, formerly of MI5 and MI6, passed away in his hospital bed, aged 89.
As the news broke the following day, the cover name Cornwell had created 60 years ago – not for a secret assignment, but for an espionage novel he was writing while still working for the British intelligence services during the Cold War – began trending worldwide.